Mayo 2007

Some countries face a national dilemma. Spain has rather a dilemma of nationalities. This is chiefly cultural and political with inter-regional disparities tending also to reinforce internal cleavages. Despite its secular conflicts of internal ethnoterritorial accommodation, Spain is an entity clearly identifiable as a country of countries, or a nation of nations. However, the social and cultural cohesion that makes up Spain’s unity does not obliterate its internal rivalries. After a long hyper-centralist dictatorship (1939-75), and peaceful transition to...

Abril 2007

In 2002, while half in the way of my PhD studies, I had the chance to have a phone interview with one of the main officers of the UNESCO International Bioethical Committee, whose name, for privacy reasons, I will not mention here. The interview was related to my application for a stage at the IBC. The UNESCO Officer listened to me carefully, while I was trying to explain why my research would have greatly benefited from a stage at IBC. However, at some point, the officer asked me what my research background was. At first, given my multidisciplinary background, I did not know how to answer...

In 2003, Adele Clarke argued that the Western world was facing an increasingly pervasive social, cultural and political phenomenon named biomedicalisation, which was transforming the concept of ‘health’ into an individual responsibility to be fulfilled through improved access to knowledge, self surveillance and the consumption of self help biomedical goods and services. More recently, Petersen has detected a parallel genetisation of health, reproduction and identity, which is allegedly encouraging the diffusion of genetic reductionism. The combined interaction of biomedicalisation and...